


sorry about the (bony elbows).

by LadyVisenya



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Witch Petunia, an abbott oc, but she tries, devil wears prada life, in which petunia works at witches weekly and lives out her best, petunia doesn't know how to be kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 08:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19169608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVisenya/pseuds/LadyVisenya
Summary: Petunia is a witch.It changes nothing.(petunia goes to hogwarts.)





	sorry about the (bony elbows).

Petunia is a witch.

It changes nothing.

Petunia is the older by two whole years. But it’s always Lily people notice first. It’s always Lily people ask about and can’t help but want to do what she wants, going along with her right up until the moment she jumps off a bridge because she’s Lily Evans. She’s pretty in the way wildflowers are, growing all over the place, rambunctious. The worst part is she doesn’t even have to try.

Meanwhile Petunia sits by their mother, quiet and polite, never forgetting to say thank you, and always to the side. Her watery completion is a poor alternative to Lily’s fiery red hair and freckle dusted skin.

But Petunia is eleven, and forgets how much it hurts as soon as Lily smiles at her. They share the secret smiles that siblings often do, and Petunia chases after Lily, never quite catching up.

*

When a strange woman comes to the door and spins tales of magic and wands and school, Petunia isn’t ready to believe it. She’s eleven and her head is filled with future houses by the seaside, baking pies, and the boy who pulled on her pigtails.

She hadn’t worn her hair in pigtails since.

Magic is for Lily. All fanciful stories that her sister isn’t ready to grow out of. That Petunia is always chiding her about.

Petunia changes her mind when she gets on the train, taking her away from the world she knows. Something just her’s. That makes her more than a nice girl always by her mother’s side. Or Lily’s sister. Her’s. This could be just her’s.

All the magic. The floating candles. The plant’s that were lovelier than anything she’d ever seen in the neighborhood. Even the staircase where you had to mind your step, as one level had a habit of falling out from under you.

Lily could have all the friends in the world. She could even have the last slice of pie their mother had made with them if Petunia could just have this.

The sorting hat is placed on her head.

 _Hatstall_ , people whisper.

Petunia can only hold still, willing this to be over, even as her hands grow slick with sweat.

“Ravenclaw!” The hat calls out as Petunia yanks the musty old thing off and makes for a seat.

*

Petunia’s heart sinks as Lily jumps off the swing, floating in the air. It’s a terrible thing to wish your sister hurt, but she would have preferred broken bones to this.

She would have preferred a lily sized coffin then this.

It’s been this way since Lily was born. Destined to outshine her in every way and Petunia feels like she’s slipping into the shadows, screaming, but no one hears her. No one can even see her. She hates how twisted it has all gotten from the days they spent playing in the fields, stringing chains of weeds when they thought they were flowers.

And yet she still can’t change the sting of knowing Lily will take Hogwarts away from her too.

*

Surprisingly, or rather not surprisingly, Petunia barely sees her sister after the first night. She’s sorted into Gryffindor without hesitation and already has a gang of Gryffindors to run around with. And two boys wrapped around her fingers with plenty more stealing glances.

No one looks at Petunia the way that boy looks at her sister. At least he’s in Slytherin and away from her.

She didn’t even try to hide the pleasure of seeing them split up when Snape has spotted her, next to Radha in their matching blue and gold ties.

Lily keeps calling out to her in the halls and Petunia ignores the hurt as she turns and walks the other way.

“You shouldn’t be this awful to your sister,” Radha hisses as they walk away before Lily can spot them, “I’d kill to have one.”

“You can have mine.”

No one without a sister, without a Lily can understand what it’s like to be pushed aside.

*

Petunia decides if she’s going to be disliked, downright unlovable, as fourth year comes around and boys start kissing girls in empty classrooms and alcoves in the library, then she’s going to be the worst version of herself she can be.

She scowls, not caring about how that’ll give her jowls later in life as written in witch’s weekly, and leers and shoves her way through the student body.

Shoves her way into Narcissia Black, soon too be Malfoy if the rumors are true. Not that there won’t be a large ad in the prophetto make it official.

Narcissia looks down at her, Petunia being the shorter one for once, and sneers. Her beauty souring, the image of pressing fingers into a bruised peach pops into Petunia’s head before-

“Mudblood,” she spits as if she had a personal vendetta against her.

What Petunia was trying to do, the blacks already had down to an art. The disdain and sneers and money were distilled into the blacks, their true inheritance.

Petunia doesn’t flinch. Her long neck, not elegant enough to be called swanlike no matter how straight she keeps her back, comes in handy for once, to stare down her nose to the other witch.

“Better a mud blood than an in bred bitch.”

She doesn’t wait. Petunia turns around and forces herself to walk slowly and surely, waiting for the hex to the back that never comes.

*

Petunia tries. But none of the material, from history to defense, comes easy to her. She studies, and tries to be clever like her blue and silver tie implies, but she’s not a natural.

Not great, not terrible.

It makes her want to yank her hair out in frustration.

All her time revising down the toilet with each exam.

Not like Lily, who her professors can’t stop falling over themselves to complement. Like the sun shines out of her arse, Petunia huffs, blowing the strand of hair that’s fallen into her face, grip tight on the plant’s roots as she holds.

This particular species was a complete brat.

She’d learned early on that herbology was a lost cause as far as keeping her uniform pristine and pressed. At least she felt good after wrestling with whatever this week’s topic was. The dirt and sweat was bearable when she felt like beaming after coaxing her subject to cooperate.

Radha collects the clippings.

If done right, they’d have grown more by the end of the week. Professor Sprout had promised ten points for each clipping that took.

She couldn’t keep the glee out of her eye at the thought of getting more house points than the rest of her classmates.

*

“I don’t know why you read that trash Tuney,” Lily motioned, elbow deep in tie dye projects. At some point last year, Lily had decided only tie dye was worth wearing.

Petunia rolled her eyes behind her copy of witches weekly. Now that she was an intern there, she got a free subscription.

It was the only real perk that came with her job.

When she’d applied, falling back on all her knowledge of muggle mags, Petunia had imagined getting all the sordid details first. Covering society weddings where the bride was just this side of round. Rubbing elbows with high ranking ministry officials, lips lax from the fire whiskey, guard down as she passes by unnoticed. Laughing with her fellow office mates as they thought of increasingly bizarre horoscopes.

Instead she got coffee orders. Running from department to department, delivering notes like a glorified post owl, and picking up props and robes for their latest shoot.

Oh all right, the last one had been fun. Dexter letting her try on hats as he scrounged up all that Mrs. Grosvenor had sent for. Telling her all the ridiculous orders old rich pureblood ladies made. The fussing and breakdowns they had at the very thought the silk wasn’t from tropical mermaids.

But still.

She would’ve accepted the apprenticeship at the Bowery Nursery if Petunia had known the late nights and running that Witches Weekly would have her doing.

At least she wasn’t pathetic enough to be marrying the moron James Potter. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought her sister had fallen and hit her head. Lily hadn’t found if funny at all when she told her as much, which was on her. Petunia couldn’t be blamed for her terrible taste in men.

“Just make sure that Grosvenor woman gives you the day off. You can’t miss my wedding Tuney!”

Her lip curls down. “I’m not even one of your bridesmaids.”

Lily sighs.

Petunia puts her magazine down. Narcissa Malfoy twirling in blinding while robes curtesy of fallen unicorn fur incorporated into the fabric on some lovely beach, while the wizarding world was being terrorized by _freaks_ in masks.

“Of course I’ll be there. But my job’s important too.”

Lily scowls, “you run errands.”

“And you don’t even have a job!”

Lily storms out of the living room, her bedroom door slamming shut seconds later. And really, she has no business getting married, fresh out of school, if she was still acting like a bloody child.

*

Toby Abbott has a quaint little office job in the department of magical accidents and catastrophes doing paperwork.

It makes Petunia fond.

He’s reliable, with a nine to five job and bank holidays, and detailed, remembering the offhand comment Petunia made about adoring trifle, coming home with a slice they split, Toby lending an ear to all the gossip she’s picked up over the day. Fringe is most definitely out.

Christina Warbeck is struggling to attract warm bodies to her concerts. And the head of broom control is most definitely sleeping with the owner of the broom shop in Diagon Alley who she’s heard could have played for England.

There are invitations to brunch and ministry dinners and the christmas party and most importantly she has a much more interesting job.

She’s writing which means it her that gets sent to cover weddings and work trips to paris at the little shops run by women older than her mother who look more put together than Petunia ever has. Petunia gets samples and scoops on who’s keeping a mistress in Camden town.

They make their tiny balcony work to grow herbs. She never has to remind Toby to water the herbs while she’s gone.

He tells her about the latest charms gone wrong. A particularly nasty spell that a teenager had come up with that made you hiccup bubbles with a terrible side effect of slowly turning the skin pink. An old crotchety witch that had cursed a muggle cafe’s cups to drink up of the liquid poured in.

She’s not Petunia Evans, no not _that_ Evans. She’s Petunia Abbott. Mother to a curly haired son with ruddy cheeks and a habit of vanishing his peas. Up and coming writer. Wife. Safe and tucked away from the masked freaks calling themselves death eaters in some sick stupid joke. Safe in the ministries fold.

*

So of course Lily has to ruin it by going and getting herself killed.

It’s just so like her.

Petunia cries through the whole funeral.

*

She tries. But every time she looks at little Harry, she only sees the arse that was James Potter. Her sister’s dead and there’s nothing left of her but those bright green eyes. She wonders if his eyes match the color of the killing curse that ended her little sisters life.

Petunia doesn’t mean to be stiff. Or cold.

But he hugs her and she can’t help but think _it should have been you_. _He only wanted you._

It’s not fair.

She doesn’t hug him back.

*

She isn’t even Petunia Abbott anymore.

She’s the boy who lived’s aunt.

He really is Lily’s son.

*

Toby notices and tries to give her space. He’s really too good to her. Taking Harry and Arlo and giving them books and crayons and telling them not to touch mummy’s very nice clothes, but take this old tweed sweater if you have to cut something. Converting the study into a room for Harry.

She finally finds a use for the things she’d savaged from her parent’s house in Cokeworth.

Petunia tries to continue her job, interviewing the creme de la crop, but the questions keep getting turned on her.

Toby comes back from the park after a few minutes, carrying Arlo and dragging Harry after being ambushed by witches and wizards staring at them like they’re animals in a zoo.

Petunia takes a deep breath. She hadn’t even talked with her sister in the year before she died. Lily had fallen off the edge of the world, not a single letter from her. No explanation and she’d assumed that Potter had dragged her sister off to some remote corner of the world.

They haven’t been close in years.

*

They trade a nice london flat for a house in the suburbs. Like the ones Petunia had dreamed about when she was a child, and privacy wards laid by Dumbledore himself, Petunia staring down her nose at him the whole time, and they both learn to commute.

*

“Petunia,” Toby tells her gently, setting aside the paperwork he’d brought home, “he’s not Lily.”

She purses her lips, staring intently at the oven, willing her cake to be perfect.

“Of course someone as important and amazing as you would have someone like Harry as a nephew.”

It does make the knot in her chest ease up.

*

Petunia still looks at Harry with annoyance that has the child scrambling out of her way, in a very on trend phoenix feather cape, makes no secret of her favoritism to her Arlo. But Harry is her sister’s son.

And sets a snake on some boys at the zoo that made fun of Arlos’s lisp.

*

Toby has trifle waiting when she gets home. The boys unwrapping the little gifts she’d brought them back from Italy, as she tells her Toby about everything she noticed while abroad.

**Author's Note:**

> petunia always struck me as the kind of woman who bought into the patriarchal role for woman. if she does x y and z, if she gets married and plays the housewife in the house with the white picket fence, if she turns down her nose as women who want more, then she'll be happy. she's a sad pathetic woman who was a deeply insecure girl masking it with jagged edges. 
> 
> idk maybe im wrong. 
> 
> either way i wrote like 70% years ago and finished it today on no sleep. 
> 
> kudos and comments much appreciated.


End file.
